Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 12, English (Old Version)

I have tried numerous versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking over the years. While in the past, the program has been interesting, but failed to meet the level of accuracy that made it a productive tool for me. I would use it for a while and then discard it. It had been a few years since I had used the program and I decided to give it another shot with version 12. I give Nuance tremendous credit because this time they got it right. I can literally speak into the microphone/headset to at a normal pace using a normal voice and it doesnt miss! Because of the outstanding accuracy, this time I will not be putting the software and headset into a drawer never to be used again. I very rarely review products as I feel the likes and dislikes of a product and its applications are subject to personal preferences and approaches. I would highly recommend this product to anyone who feels that dictating is a more efficient and preferable approach to completing their written work and correspondences then typing. I have written this entire review using Dragon Naturally Speaking, and while my language and syntax may be lacking, the software picked up every word exactly as I said it. I believe that this product has truly arrived.

When this program works it is awesome. Unfortunately it is buggy and wont work about half the times I sit down to use it. It is as frustrating as a Ferrari that is sitting right there in your garage, it is a lovely day so you go out to take a drive, but the car wont start and you have to spend a large part of this lovely day trying to figure out why your Ferrari wont start. You really want to drive your Ferrari because when it drives, it is awesome. But if it wont start, it is a big frustrating useless piece of metal in your garage. I have used DNS since 1995 and this version 12 is the worst for this kind of behavior. Im glad they have invented such an accurate speech processor but the other aspects of using this program (like opening it) very nearly make it unusable. It is very fast (and accurate) at processing speech while it is working, however every correction takes interminable seconds to complete such that you dont want to do that. Each correction operation is so long that I have lately just been selecting and typing in the corrected term which, I know, doesnt let it learn, but it is so frustrating to wait 30-50 seconds for each correction. Closing down the program frequently takes 2-4 minutes, such that you have to plan your workflow around it. DNS 12 wont start for me about 30% of the time. This morning it was The user profile you have selected was created with a previous version of NaturallySpeaking.... (it was not). On other occasions the messages have been, This user profile is being used by another Windows program or, The user profile you have selected cannot be accessed..., or the always possible,NaturallySpeaking has become unstable.... When one of these appears, I know it will take me the next 10-60 minutes of closing and opening the program, turning off and on the computer, tinkering around with the profile, saving it in a different place, restoring it from backup, whatever to get it started. I only use it with Word and it makes Word hang (not responding) for 30-50 seconds each time I open a new file after dictating. It happens so reliably that I contacted support because I could send them an accurate description of the problem complete with screen shots. They seemed interested for a while, asking for more information, but then said they had a solution, I tried it and it didnt work and have now stopped responding. So the Dragon people have obviously put a lot of time into making it NOT usable with medical record programs (so they can soak the doctors for three times the money). That part works very reliably!!! This programs behavior is very nearly making me not use it any more. I have had version 12 for about 4 months and as always a new upgrade (the recent 12.5) offers hope, but then fails to deliver. Im not sure I want to take the time to go back to version 11 or 11.5. I am going to stick it out another few weeks but this loss of productivity is one of the most frustrating things in my life right now. Id rather pay for my old reliable, predictable dictation service.

I have been reading about Dragon Naturally Speaking software for some years now, but have been reluctant to take the plunge primarily because of the seemingly large number of negative reviews surrounding it. I recently convinced myself, however, to just go ahead and try it out and see what MY opinion of it would be. Its been kind of a complicated road but, in the end, has finally worked out well. First, I made the mistake of ordering the software directly off of the Nuance site since it appeared that I would be saving $30 by doing so. From the description on the Nuance site, it appeared that there would be a headset included with the purchase. Not being a terribly bright fellow, I bought it only to discover that (1) it was for a download only and that (2) no mic-headset was included. It took quite a while to initially download the program and there was a lot of futzing about getting it installed; not very smooth at all. But eventually, I got it to work. Since I didnt have a headset-mic or even a stand-alone mic to use, I simply used my webcam mic. That worked okay, but while the results were very surprisingly good, there were a number of mistakes which was well short of the advertised 99% accuracy mark. I accepted this since I was using a mic that was not really intended for this kind of situation. Now heres the level of my stupidity: I kept thinking that the headset (which, as previously mentioned was described as being included) would be shipped to me. I saw nothing to indicate that this was indeed the case so I emailed Nuance customer support for the answer to which they responded back to me in about 2 days. A number to call was provided to me to call. I was told by Nuance CS that no headset was in fact included. I asked for a refund, deciding to re-order using Amazon instead. This is what I should have done in the first place. Getting the refund has been a far more lengthy wait than seems necessary. When I ordered DNS through Amazon. I also ordered the Andrew NC-181VM USB mic-headset since these received generally high praise from a number of reviewers for use with DNS (see my separate review on these). Now, after that lengthy spiel, on to Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12: In a word, Amazing! This is the stuff of sci-fi made real. Coupled with the Andrea headset, and after doing only the preliminary training, DNS worked almost flawlessly right out of the box. I havent yet (and probably never will) scientifically assessed the actual accuracy of DNS, but if it isnt the advertised 99%, its pretty darn close. Thats been my experience so far, at least. I still have a lot to learn and remember about some of the voice commands that you can use, and especially some its more esoteric abilities as far as controlling programs and such, but so far Im completely impressed with what DNS can do. I was concerned because of the several negative reviews about Premium 12 being less than some previous version or another. I honestly cant address that and, quite frankly, its now become completely irrelevant to me since Premium 12 has met and exceeded any expectations I had of it. It just flat works and it works amazingly well. If some previous version somehow worked better for some other person for whatever reason, more power to them. My only objection to some of those opinions is when they attempt to prevent the purchase of Premium 12 based on their objections. I think it is perfectly acceptable to state ones own experiences and biases about a product, but quite another to block the purchase of that product or tool that I believe many others if not most would find perfectly acceptable and useful without having to resort to some outdated and perhaps less supported version of the product. Im all for fair and reasonable criticism of a product, but some sense of reality needs to enter into our opinions. Which brings me to my criticisms of Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12. DNS is not without its flaws. The installation process, even with the CD was somewhat on the kludgy side. First, it was on the lengthy side, but that is okay with me, except that during this lengthy installation process I received at some point mid-way through installation some kind of error message that I didnt understand that seemed to indicate there was some kind of installation failure and told me something had not completed successfully. I thought Oh, great....Now Ive got either buggy software or Im going to have to try to start over again. But once I clicked the error message off, installation proceeded on happily and finally finished. And then, of course there was the whole registration process to go through (actually, I had to enter the same information--serial #, etc--at least twice) before I could actually start using it and tackle the preliminary voice training sessions. Since there was that installation hiccup along the way, I thought that something was surely going to prevent the program from running or cause some other bump along the road, but it hasnt happened yet, so I guess all is well in spite of the nagging feeling that something might be missing that needs to be there. In spite of the lengthy and somewhat convoluted installation process, I can still easily justify the 5 Stars I have given it. In the big picture of the world of software, this has to be one of the giants along with being, perhaps, even a potentially life-changing tool for many people for many reasons. All I really know and really care about now, however, that DNS Premium 12 is running and seems to be running flawlessly. The amazing thing about this incredible tool is that it tracks very rapidly. Im a pretty fast typist and I initially thought that I could probably type faster than what DNS could keep up with. Not so. I can start blabbering at a pretty good clip and DNS seems to hang right in there with me, even though I have to pause my flow to insert the punctuation, etc as I rattle on. The main catch here is that you have to have your thoughts pretty much under your belt already before speaking. If you are halting and stopping and kind of fumbling around as you speak, DNS doesnt handle that all that well. That is one advantage of typing; you can pause and think about what you want to say at any point in the flow without everything getting all hung up and bumfuzzled. With DNS, you will find yourself doing more corrections if that is the case. I really dont know how many people out there might actually need Dragon Naturally Speaking. I think if you are a troubled or slow typist, this would be an absolute boon to you. If you are a lousy speller, DNS handles spelling corrections extremely well, usually on the fly. I am neither of these things; I am both a fast typist and a pretty good speller most of the time. Nevertheless, I still find DNS an incredible tool. I must say that it may take me a while to find ways for me to use it and truly justify its purchase. But being the geek that I am, I will do my best to find a way to put it to good use. So, for right now, I stand extremely impressed with what I regard as among the more useful innovations in the software realm. Just as an aside: before investing in DNS, I did try out the built-in Speech Recognition feature of Windows 7. It works fairly well and is impressive to a degree in its own right. In my opinion, however, it doesnt hold a candle to DNS and quite frankly, suffers from too many weaknesses that would render it too frustrating for me to use for most purposes. It just doesnt offer nearly the accuracy or sophistication of DNS. In conclusion, I can highly recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 12 to anyone seriously interested in getting their feet wet using speech to text translation. I hope you will find it as amazing as I have.

I have used Dragon for a couple of years for dictation at work and find that it can greatly reduce my paperwork time. I bought the new version because my old one was becoming glitchy and I could not find the cd to reload the program. The only complaint that I have is that it does not work that well with my interface at work (EPIC) and so I will sometimes dictate it on Word and cut/paste the note into EPIC. Training can still be a hassle and when I am tired or sick I have more errors.

I bought this to help my daughter write papers for school. She spent over an hour programming her voice into the software and when she began using it, it couldnt follow her voice accurately. She is in the 7th grade and her vocabulary is not sophisticated. When she spoke into the software it would type about every third or forth word incorrectly, requiring her to go back and manually edit the text. Once the editing was finished she had lost her train of thought and had to go back and try to recall where she was in her writing. By the time she got through the first two paragraphs (175 words = 45 minutes) her writing was incomplete and far below her ability. I am going to post the software on Craigslist where I will be competing with many other dissatisfied customers selling theirs.

First: Im a professional writer. My issues may not be all that critical to people who are simply playing with this software. But for me they matter quite a bit. I bought this software recently. I got it to run just fine, and it seemed to handle its core function (voice recognition) well, after fairly extensive training (initial accuracy was truly awful, but it did get much better). However, I do not recommend this product for any serious business-critical use. Its just a toy, and the company treats it as such. Issues I ran into (the last mentioned is the worst by far, IMHO): * The included word processor crashes fairly often, and there is no auto-save feature. * The companys claims to the contrary, voice commands are flaky/unreliable/unresponsive in all other applications, including their dictation box. * The default spaces before & after punctuation are simply incorrect. I fixed these issues as they came up, but it was odd. * The software has lots of commands involving the word paragraph--but to Dragon, paragraphs are *always* followed by two carriage returns. This is fine for email, but for anything else I have to either (1) give up on using a bunch of commands, or (2) delete extraneous spaces throughout my documents. * All quotation marks, to Dragon, are straight. I fixed this for some commands, but I cant fix it for all of them, especially the most useful (quote that). This includes *all* apostrophes within words. This means I have to do some sort of post-processing on all documents intended for professional publication. * Capitalization of text after quotation marks (such as in dialogue) is iffy. Its right...sometimes. This means more effort goes into proofreading, and although Ive figured out the situations in which it does and doesnt work, its not something I can afford to stop and think about while Im writing. Since Im also a software guy, I could probably write an app to fix it, but come on. Really? * Copy/paste from their word processor does not seem to transfer any formatting (bullet points, etc.) without making it ugly/messy/useless. So I have to do all of that in some other program. Thus Dragon is only, as far as I can see, a slow plain-text machine. That crashes and loses work. * Customer support is interested ONLY in closing tickets, as far as I can see. My basis for this last claim: I sent them some questions (mostly involving the issues above) via their support system. I received an apparently automated response telling me theyd respond within 48 business hours, whatever that means. (A week and a day, maybe?) I then received an obvious stock message asking me whether I was using a desktop or a laptop, asking what sort of microphone I was using, requiring me to try dictation via various methods, etc. None of it was at all relevant to my questions, as Id flat told em the voice recognition part itself was working fairly well. Their message then went on to say that theyd consider the issue closed if I didnt respond within 14 days. I responded, pointing out that nothing in their stock message was relevant and also that their guaranteed response time, already unclear as to meaning, apparently applied only to their initial auto-responder, as there was no further guarantee mentioned. I asked when someone would actually read the email I had sent. I asked why they thought this sort of treatment would endear them to customers. Four days later, their system (or perhaps an employee) responded, giving a name intended to convince me it was sent by a separate person...with precisely the same stock message. None of my actual questions or points were so much as acknowledged. As a toy, this thing is okay. I might even be able to use it as a plain-text device--what I have to do is a quick automated edit (yeah, I wrote a quick program for this), then send the plain-text I get from that via a keyboard simulator that types my text into Scrivener, which then fixes the straight-quote issues. Cumbersome, to say the least. And I do ALL of my dictation via a remote microphone, so software crashes wont cause me to lose my work...except for the edits and corrections I have to make to each transcribed recording, and I try to save those regularly as I go. But if I can, Ill get a refund from either the company or Amazon. I dont believe a company that treats its customers so dismissively should be successful, and I dont want to help pay for their existence.

Okay, for those of you who have not read my review of DragonDictate for 3 Mac, I originally bought that piece of garbage and then discovered this marvel of technology. I cannot say in mere words, how unbelievably effective this software is. Right now I am speaking to my computer, and having grown up in New York, speaking rather fast. Nevertheless, the software keeps up with me and so far has made not one mistake in the transcription of my voice. How cool is that? When you start with this product, you MUST learn how to dictate. Being kind of an old guy, and having worked with secretaries who actually took shorthand, this is not a problem for me. For you young people out there who have no experience in dictation, this might require some time to get used to. Once you figure out exactly how to dictate, speaking clearly, enunciating, and speaking in a normal manner-no ums or you know-your writing will fly. So far Ive had to make one small correction, a spacing error and just in the sentence, it thought I said a spacious error, but that was my fault because I mumbled. And it took a nano second to correct. I still havent mastered all of the hundreds of commands available to control cursor position, move around the page, open web apps, and I havent tried it with Microsoft Excel, but I have used it with Microsoft Word 2007 and it works brilliantly. I have also obviously used it here, directly in the Amazon text box, and again it is working perfectly. I think that once I have mastered the commands designed for controlling the computer I will almost never touch mouse or keyboard again. Let me stress, there is a learning curve. But it is not bad. For anyone who has a problem typing or using a mouse-carpal tunnel syndrome or anything else similar-or anyone who just wants to forget about typing, dont hesitate, buy this product. Just remember that the faster your computer is, the more RAM you have, the greater processing power you have, the faster this product will work. I am using it right now on in Acer V5-I5 with 8 GB of RAM and it is working very well. I tried it on a cheaper Lenovo - I 3 processor equipped machine and, although I really like the new Lenovo, it was too slow so I returned it and got this. If you dont mind using a desktop, I would suggest that you build your own with a quad core and a boatload of RAM. It would probably be overkill, but at least you could try your hand at some cool gaming. Im not sure how well this product would work as a game controller but wouldnt that be awesome. Finally, Im not a great proofreader, in fact I suck at proofreading. I also cant spell worth beans. Maybe you can find a lot of mistakes in this document, but I cant, and if I really wanted to be perfect, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 will read the document back to you, mistakes and all, and you could fix it as you go. Once again, dont hesitate its worth every single penny. Postscript: I forgot to mention that the software comes with a pretty good headset, at least its pretty good if you computer recognizes it. I tried it on my Mac using the crappy Mac version of this software and it worked very well, but when I tried it in my Acer, it didnt work at al. l I then tried a Logitech USB headset that I had laying around and that sucked too. Finally, I was lucky enough to have a very inexpensive headset by Cyber Acoustics, that I got from I dont know where, and it is working perfectly. Several other reviews that I have read say that the headset is critical. That is absolutely true, but the headset doesnt have to be expensive. That said, I am planning to get a good Bluetooth headset for this thing and if any of you out there who own the software could give me a recommendation or two I would appreciate it. My Mac Version of Dragon came with a Plantronics Callisto and it sucked. (By the way the software recognized and correctly typed both Plantronics and Callisto without hesitation. And from those of you from Texas-I just live here-it knows how to write yall.

I used dragon 6 years ago, and it was error prone and slow. The new dragon 12 is a big improvement. I use it for word processing only. But I almost gave up on it until I serendipitiously repositioned the microphone front and center of my mouth rather than off to the side as dragon suggests. Accuracy improved dramatically as a result. Loading and closing down are not too long, except when choosing to do accuracy updating. I would reccomend if you take care and pay attention to training problem words and mic positioning.

Ive typed since college; 30+ years. I write proposals to get work and write marketing plans (the work) when I get new clients. Ive hesitated getting a voice product, knowing it would help, but concerned it would force me to change how I compose what I write (I compose as I type). This has been my only challenge with the product, since Dragon has made everything else so simple and easy. You basically install it and it holds your hand through the learning cycle. It can keep up with me as I speed up my speaking speed, and its true, the instructions tell you to speak just as you normally speak. Ive never felt like I had to e-nun-ci-ate. I just talk. Im very satisfied with the software and am happy to recommend it. If you believe this type of software will help you but you are hesitating, stop. Its one of the smartest things Ive done in a long time. Two pieces of advice: Its important to go back and read/edit what you write. If your way of speaking isnt as concise as your writing -- mine isnt -- some of your sentence structure will surprise you and need smoothing. It will be easy to go back to keyboarding at first because this is a change in how you do something you do a lot. Dont. Go back to Dragon when you find yourself going back to typing something. The more you use it, the more natural it will feel. Great productivity tool. It is obvious a lot of people have put a lot of time into this product.

I am shocked at how well this works! I bought it because I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, which causes a great deal of pain especially for me in my hands. This makes typing very difficult. My voice is kind of nasally and sounds awful on VoIP so I thought Dragon Naturally Speaking might not work for me. I was very wrong. Right off the start it was nearly perfect. With a few hours of voice training, which it does daily at a set time using any work I have done with it, Dragon has my voice patterns down and does not miss a word I say! I am very satisfied with this product. How difficult it was to learn? There are simple easy to follow instructions and help that made learning this software easy for me. I literally jumped right in. Installation was very simple and straight forward, I just put the disk in and selected the .exe file then I followed the simple instructions. It was done in no time and ready to go.